Memo to Reid: Cancellation pain in ObamaCare increasing

Ed MorrisseyPosted at 11:21 am on February 28, 2014

Getting into ObamaCare may be the easy task. Getting out of an ObamaCare plan — well, as we’ve noted before, that can be painful indeed, and the pain is getting worse. WFLV-TV in Florida finds that ObamaCare resembles Hotel California … you can check out any time you want, but you can never leave (via Daniel Halper):

In early January he signed up for a plan that cost nearly $300 a month. About a half hour later he and his wife realized they could barely afford that. They quickly found a less expensive plan through Humana for $116 a month.

“I immediately called back Florida Blue and asked them to cancel the policy,” Robinson said.

But he quickly learned canceling that coverage is no easy task. He said Florida Blue officials told him if he signed up for the other policy, his Florida Blue policy would cancel automatically, but the exact opposite happened instead.

“[Florida Blue] took the premium two days later and almost wiped out our account,” Robinson said.

More than six weeks later, after spending 50-60 hours on the phone, his policy is still not canceled. Robinson is still waiting for the payment Florida Blue withdrew from his account to be refunded.

So much for all of the ObamaCare “horror stories” being lies, eh, Senator Reid? That claim earned Reid two Pinocchios yesterday from Glenn Kessler, who advised Reid to “drop[] the harsh rhetoric” and just say many of the ads run by AFP have “serious problems.”

One serious problem for Reid and the White House, though, is that most of these stories don’t come from ads — they come from local news stations, which keep up a lot better with the pain than the national media does. Fox News reports one one mother who’s irate over being called a liar by Harry Reid:

“Does this look like a lie to you?” Democrats should be lining up to smack Reid across the chops for giving that kind of platform to every horror story, as well as making them all look heartless and cruel. Maybe they should think about returning him to the backbenches.